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Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 is the fourth entry in the ''Unreal'' series. It was developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, and was released to stores on September 30, 2002. __TOC__ Synopsis In 2291, consensual murder is legalized, opening the way for a previously underground event. Smaller mining companies have been running smaller matches to channel aggression, but now the Liandri Mining Corporation established a professional league, which quickly proves to be an extremely lucrative way of public entertainment. Liandri entered into the Tournament, as it is officially called, sponsoring their own team, the Corrupt. The Corrupt's leader, Xan Kriegor, quickly achieved champion status and held it for two years. In 2293, a human named Malcolm dethroned him and became champion himself. A huge media figure, Malcolm is hailed as the biggest star in human history and is worshiped as a god. His success nets great rewards for his sponsoring corporation, attracting the attention of jealous rivals both in the arenas of the Tournament and in the corridors of power a galaxy away. Liandri attempted to win back the champion title with Xan MK2 but failed (unknown to the other contestants, each member of the Corrupt is purely robotic, including Xan). Now it is 2302. The Tournament is undergoing a massive overhaul. The aging Sniper Rifle (a relic of centuries past) is removed from the Tournament as is "Assault" - a team-based event that forms a part of the competition. Many fans of the Tournament complain at these changes, with some combatants refusing to participate in the new format. Malcolm, shortly after his victory, hired two of his former opponents (Brock and Lauren, members of the former Iron Guard team) as teammates in his reformed Thunder Crash team. But the Axon Research Corporation, another of the four great corporations, entered the Tournament as well, sponsoring the geneboosted Juggernaut team, led by the brutal and savage Gorge. Overview The game is a PC sequel to Unreal Tournament (UT99) (as Unreal Championship, the true sequel to UT99, is a console exclusive title.) Featuring Unreal Engine 2, UT2003 brings to the players a different level of experience, sporting an intense graphical and audio overhaul, as well as reworked gameplay featuring cool new additions. The PC players can now engage in a faster and more aggressive combat, while maintaining the basic gameplay mecha from the classics. A brand new roster of characters, on brand new arenas, and two brand new gametypes give the game a breath of fresh air. The game package is also topped with a serving of classic elements, to add to that feeling of nostalgia for the veteran players out there. Development history Unreal Tournament 2003 was initially developed as Unreal Tournament 2, and was unofficially announced on December 3, 2001. It was officially announced by Infogrames (now Atari) on January 4, 2002. The game began development as a PC port of the then existing Unreal Championship code for the original Xbox named Unreal Tournament 2. Initially, the game continued development alongside Unreal Championship and the two games were expected to be released around the same time in the summer of 2002. However, after E3 2002, it became clear to Epic and DE that they would be able to complete both UT2003 and Unreal Championship faster if each team was dedicated to one specific game, so Epic took over UT2003 allowing DE to focues on Unreal Championship. The game's name was also changed by Digital Extremes to give the game more of a sports theme feel. Tying with this is the removal of Assault, because it "did not fit into the sports nature of UT'03". This is also the reason of why Bombing Run is replacing it. Assault would return for the sequel, though. Plenty of maps were under development for 2003, but were cut due to lack of time. Of these cut maps, BR-DE-ElecFields and CTF-DE-LavaGiant2 were released with the DE Bonus Pack, DM-Gestalt was released as a retail map for Unreal Tournament 2004, and CTF-Lethargic and DOM-Ixcorra (described as "a large iron alien structure in a surrounding outdoor setting") were never released in either 2003 or 2004. Also planned for release were the Survival gamemode from Championship, vehicles (something which was only fully implemented in Unreal Tournament 2004), and two weapons which were mentioned in previews: the "Ion Cannon" (no relationship with the big turret which appears in 2004's AS-RobotFactory or the cannon that is used in the open space maps in 2003) and the "Lobster Gun". Jokingly enough, Juan Pancho 'XceptOne' Eekels said about the latter: Around this time in the summer of 2002, someone working for ATI, who had received a pre-release copy of UT2003 to demo their new hardware, leaked it onto many popular P2P programs. This is sometimes referred to as the "927 beta". Also around the time Epic took over the development of UT2003, Mark Rein began reporting that the demo would be out in "around two weeks". Every two weeks he would come back and say "it's going to be at least two more weeks". This led to a variety of jokes regarding Mark Rein and "two weeks". When the demo was actually nearing completion in mid-September, 2002, CliffyB set up a webcam that was pointed at a sign on the wall of Epic's office stating that the demo would be done in so much time, eventually coming down to hours. The demo was finally released on September 13th, 2002. with four maps: DM-Antalus, DM-Asbestos, CTF-Citadel, and BR-Anubis. The original plans for it included a different map lineup: BR-Endagra, CTF-Chrome, the aforementioned Antalus, DM-Curse3 and DOM-Suntemple, and would have showcased the Ion Cannon, included in the first and last maps. It saw massive initial success. Most download records at the time were broken upon it's release. The Mac version of the demo, which included this same lineup, was released after the ending of the game's lifecycle, on May 7, 2003. The reason for this delay, as told to a journalist during the presentation of Unreal Tournament 2004 on the E3 2003, was OSX itself. According to some Epic employees, Epic delayed the release date of the game until they were happy with what they had. Exactly a week later on September 20th, the game went gold, with the official release taking place ten days later, on September 30, 2002. There were many small changes made between the demo and the retail version of the game. One of the largest of these changes being modifications to the link gun. Upon release, UT2003 was indexed in Germany due to local laws, which means that the game cannot be sold to minors, advertised or displayed openly in stores in any way. On February 19th, 2003, an updated demo was released, running on version 2206. In addition to a number of bug fixes, it included an additional map: CTF-Orbital2. On March 1, 2003, servers and players were being told to update to version 2199, as the master server won't advertise non-updated servers. This is due to fixes for long-standing server exploits which prompted Epic to deliver most of their testing crew to solve it, but also delayed the Epic Bonus Pack. The lifecycle of UT2003 ended with the release of the final patch (version 2225) removing the CD checks, as well as the release of the Brightskins Add-On for tournament play. Release dates Unreal Tournament 2003 had only one release. It was published by Atari and released to stores on September 30, 2002. Other Unreal Tournament games have been released in a variety of formats, however UT2003 was skipped over even for the Unreal Anthology since almost all of it's content was also included in UT2004. Post-release content The retail version of UT2003 didn't came with a "Ultra High Detail" mode in the GUI (such settings required the edition of UT2003.ini) because, according to Mark Rein, video cards at a time couldn't support it, so it was later added in a patch. Also out of the retail version was demo recording, later added in the version 2166 patch. Two bonus packs shipped post-release, one created by Epic Games employees, and the other created by Digital Extremes. The packs were named, respectively Epic Bonus Pack and DE Bonus Pack. According to Cliff Bleszinski, the packs were made in order to continue with the free content tradition from Unreal Tournament, and additional characters were under consideration. The Epic Bonus Pack was announced first, announced some months after the release of the game. The first map shown was DM-Injector by long time community mapper Jeremy 'Faceless' Graves , with Cliff Bleszinski confirming "at least 5 new maps", two of which ended up being DOM-Junkyard (created by Alan 'Talisman' Willard) and DM-Icetomb (a joint production between him and Chris Perna), and a new gametype, Mutant. The other two gametypes that would ship with the pack, Invasion and the returning Last Man Standing, were announced on December 20. Also shipping with this pack are three new announcers: a deeper, less-hammy male one, and two female announcers, one regular and another called "sexy"; a grand total of nine new maps, and an MP3 player. On January 3, 2003, it was known that the maps DM-1on1-Crash, DM-1on1-Mixer and CTF-DoubleDammage would also ship with the pack, and that it would weigh around 300MB. The February 2003 issue of the Computer Gaming World magazine had an article focused on the pack and also displayed screenshots of a new map, DM-IronDeity. Eventually, the release of the pack was delayed due to inner workings requiring an update. On January 23, it was announced that the pack would include at least one new mutator. On January 24, it was revealed that the pack would include one map for Bombing Run and the aforementioned DOM-Junkyard as the only Double Domination map. It was originally supposed to ship with patch version 2186, however there were discoveries for long-standing server exploits which not only delayed the release of the pack, but also prompted the release of a newer patch. The pack was finally released on March 11, 2003, with the remaining confirmed maps being BR-Canyon, DM-Rustatorium and CTF-Avaris, as well as two new Adrenaline combos, Camouflage and Pint-Sized, in the form of a mutator. The DE Bonus Pack began development nearly around the same time, with an estimated release date for Christmas 2002. The first confirmed maps for the pack were, of course, BR-DE-ElecFields and CTF-DE-LavaGiant2, which didn't made the cut for retail 2003. On January 3, 2003, it was reported that the pack would only contain maps, none of them coming from Unreal Championship and that it would be focused on competitive online play. The full map lineup was revealed on January 30, and it included the maps CTF-DE-ElecFields, DM-DE-GrendelKeep, DM-DE-Ironic and DM-DE-Osiris2; it also mentioned the pack nearing 195 MB on release and being released in UMOD and ZIP formats; the next day it was released officially. Near the end of the life cycle of 2003, on April 16, 2003, it was announced that another free mutator was in the works, called "UT Classic". The mutator wouldn't see the light until UT2004. A 64-bit patch was announced by AMD on November 20, 2002; the release date of said patch would ship at the same time as AMD Athlon 64 processors. Benchmarks were run in this version on February 20, 2003. In the end, there wasn't any 64-bit patch for UT2003, the release itself being delayed for the end of UT2004's lifecycle, though Tim Sweeney said that roughly 99.9% of the Unreal codebase was already 64-bit safe and didn't need touching. Game content Gamemodes Like Unreal Championship and Unreal Tournament 2004, the game features a Ladder mode where you draft your team and then rise up in the ladder until you become the champion. Aside from this mode, UT2003 features eight gamemodes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Double Domination, Bombing Run, Last Man Standing, Invasion and Mutant. The last three modes are added with the Epic Bonus Pack. With the exception of BR, CTF and DDOM, the rest of the modes use the Deathmatch set of maps. Characters Unlike Unreal Championship and Unreal Tournament 2004, this time the teams are mixed, as in, formed with different characters regarding of race. Races present in the game are the same as those in Unreal Championship. * Anubans * Automatons * Gen Mo'Kai * Juggernauts * Mercenaries * Nightmares Three new characters are present in 2003: Malcolm, Brock and Lauren. Weapons The weapon roster is almost the same as Unreal Championship, the only difference is that it also includes the Redeemer. Items Soundtrack Starsky Partridge (Digital Extremes) and Kevin Riepl (Epic Games) are credited for creating the music of Unreal Tournament 2003. The UT2003 soundtrack contains grand orchestral scores, hard rock and minimalistic electronic songs. Starsky Partridge was also responsible for the music for Unreal II, and Unreal Championship. Reception The game set a record for the number of downloads (1.2 million) when the demo was released, which is a reflection of the popularity of the original UT. In addition, the game engine has been widely licensed for games such as the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series, Splinter Cell, and America's Army. UT2003 has received mostly disappointing reviews, because it did not have the impact that its 1999 predecessor had. One reason was increased competition, with Halo: Combat Evolved, Tribes 2, and Battlefield 1942. These games had raised the bar for the multiplayer first-person shooter gaming by including vehicles and more complex teamplay. Fans of the series thought the new gameplay features detracted from the fun of the original game and stopped playing. Critiques of the game mostly often included double jumping, dodge jumping, the inclusion of adrenaline, and the overall reduction in damage and effectiveness of all of the weapons aside from hitscan. A few months after the release of the game, a fairly strong, small community rose up around the game and lasted until the release of Unreal Tournament 2004. Essential Files Here you can find a list of official and unofficial, yet essential, files for your game. Trivia * UT2003 contains several Easter eggs (e.g. a hidden vehicle) to hint at future potential for the series. * Unreal Tournament 2004, the similar but highly refined sequel with added game types, arrived in 2004 and completely replaced UT2003 on store shelves. UT2004 boxes sold in the United States include a voucher that, along with proof of having bought UT2003, gives a discount for UT2004. * The alternate box art features Cannonball with the Ball from Bombing Run as the highlighted character, alongside Prism and Damarus. * A number of copies of the game came with a misprinted manual. Instead of the regular black text, the booklet was printed in orange text and was difficult to read. This prompted Epic to release a PDF version of the game manual.PDF version of the game manual * Months after the release of the game, Mark Rein was consulted if there was going to be a "Pro" version of UT2003 for tournament play, a rumor which was gaining some tract at the time. This was denied by him: Gallery Unreal Tournament 2003 - Official Trailer !UT2003-Intro-1.jpg !UT2003-Intro-2.jpg !UT2003-Intro-3.jpg !UT2003-Character-Artwork-1.jpg !UT2003-Character-Artwork-2.jpg !UT2003-Character-Artwork-3.jpg !UT2003-Character-Artwork-4.jpg External links and references * Unreal Tournament 2003 @ Wikipedia See also * Unreal Tournament * Unreal Tournament 2004 * Unreal Tournament 3